


i slip into the city at night, i leave everything behind

by andfinallywearehome



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/F, also a lot of bond and madeleine being platonic soulmates, soulmate!AU, there's 00q in here too, waiting for bond25 to destroy my headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-28 23:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andfinallywearehome/pseuds/andfinallywearehome
Summary: Madeleine Swann’s soulmate has written to her since the day she was born.(or, madeleine swann's life has always been tangled up in the world of spies and secret agents, so surely it makes sense that her soulmate is also a part of that world?)





	i slip into the city at night, i leave everything behind

**Author's Note:**

> all i want is bond and madeleine being bi bros and sitting in different coffee houses around the world whilst they talk about their lives as LGBTQ people.
> 
>  
> 
> title comes from the song The Chase by ellie hall, and i own nothing recognisable.

Madeleine Swann’s soulmate has written to her since the day she was born. Granted, yes, a lot of it didn’t make that much sense in those days, and didn’t seem to be any attempts to start conversation, but she’s always had them, these marks that cover her slim frame, her arms, her elbows, her knees. She thinks they’re bruises at first, when she becomes old enough to notice them herself, but her parents shake off her concerns, and her father tells her not to worry, _mon ch_ _é_ _ri_ , because it’s only pen, and maybe she simply did it herself whilst she was playing?

Even then, Madeleine knows she didn’t.

She gets to the age of four or five (she can’t remember exactly which) when she starts to sometimes doodle back, trying to copy the shapes left behind on her skin, but her clumsy fingers can’t match them exactly, and they look sloppy in comparison. Her __soulmate,__ a new concept she’s picked up in her _maternelle_   school _ _,__  doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, it only encourages them to keep going. It doesn’t take long before her entire body is covered in doodles, from head to toe, and her father is fussing (albeit fondly) because she doesn’t have clothes that will properly cover all of them up until every last one of them fades.

She doesn’t start writing messages, or even words, even when childlike curiosity threatens to take over, until the night that she finds out that perhaps her father has things in his life that he doesn’t want to share with them. She’s never been quite sure why there are weapons hidden around the house, why it seems that most other families don’t keep guns under their kitchen sinks, why those same families in their neighbourhood never seem to be as concerned about security as her father is.

Maybe it’s not to protect __them__ , after all. Maybe it’s only to protect himself.

_****j’ai peur****_  is written on her arm in dark blue ink.

She huddles in the corner of her bedroom, hands clapped over her ears to block out the memory of the gunshot, and waits for a reply. It never comes.

 

+

 

At twelve years old, Madeleine starts English lessons at school. She hates them, because there’s something about English as a language that she can’t quite get her head around, no matter how many times her mother tells her that it’s important, that she needs to have a grasp of English if she wants to get into Oxford to study medicine. She’s not even sure that she does, but she knows that she wants to be a doctor, and her mother has never been wrong in the past so she trusts her judgement.

Her father comes home early from work one day. She wants to go down and see him, maybe to ask why he's been working _late_ for the past two weeks, but she stops herself when she hears the murmurs of a rather tense conversation, and then crashing from downstairs in time to the sound of her parents' voices, getting louder and louder.

She curls up under her blankets with her favourite pen, a jumbo felt-tip in a colour that always reminds her of sunshine. She writes **_**_j’ai peur_**_**  on her wrist again, and then, shakier, **_**_i’m scared_**_**  underneath, two languages side by side.

She doesn’t think anything will come of it - why should it? - but, a few moments later, a reply blooms on her wrist, a reply in her second language written in untidy, looped handwriting that takes her a few moments to translate.

_scared of what?_

**_**_everything_ ** _ **

Again, she doesn’t get a reply to that.

 

+

 

Her mother and father divorce when she’s fifteen, and Madeleine can’t say that she’s surprised. Ever since that night as a young child, she’s realised that her father isn’t the great man she once believed him to be, and also realised that she doesn’t want anything to do with his criminal lifestyle anymore.

In the end, when the time comes, she does as her mother says and moves to Oxford to study medicine. The place is a world away from everything she’s grown up with, but, then again, that’s exactly what she wants. She has a chance to start again now, and she’s not going to waste it.

She tags along with some friends to a bar one night, in an attempt to try and live like a real university student, but it’s a night that starts in the bar and ends in the bed of one of her classmates, and involves her sneaking out of the girl’s window before she wakes up.

She decides not to touch alcohol too much after that.

 

+

 

_you’re really clever_  appears on her body during a dreary morning lecture, and Madeleine nearly jumps out of her seat when she suddenly notices the writing on her wrist that hadn’t been there when she left the flat that morning.

**_**_what do you mean?_**_** She scribbles back, cautious under the wandering eyes of her teacher.

_you scribble notes down on your arms when you’re not concentrating_  is the reply, stretched across her palm, followed by _not a big leap_  running along the side of her pinky finger. She’s never even thought about this, that her hasty assignment notes as she runs out of the lecture theatre to catch up with her friends would end up on the arm of someone who could potentially be thousands of miles away.

**_**_are they annoying?_**_**   She asks on her other hand.

_no_ , the reply says on her other wrist. _fascinating_.

 

+

 

James Bond is everything she shouldn’t want, everything she wanted to leave behind when she started a new life for herself - and yet, here she is, running off with him in his stolen car during the early hours of the grey London morning.

And, for a little while, everything is perfect. Madeleine is __happy__ , happier than she’s been in a long time, floating around Europe with Bond, stealing kisses in alleyways and dark corners, caught up on the adrenaline of it all like they’re infatuated teenagers.

Of course, the adrenaline doesn’t last forever; it’s maybe three weeks into their retirement - better to call it _retirement_ than _running away_ \- that things start to slow down. They still explore, they still do all the traditional tourist activities on offer, but she’s begun to notice the growing amount of whisky, the lingering scent of a smoked cigarette after she’s left him to his own devices, Bond’s hesitation to keep them in the same place for too long. She’s trained to pick up on these things, these change of habits, so much so that she almost can’t help it, nor can she help the tense words that are thrown across the table at dinner one night that may or may not be about more than the liquor that is no doubt going to be making a short-lived home on their nightstand.

Bond almost sounds like he regrets this entire decision, and perhaps she too regrets it a little.

The hotel that they’ve decided to stay in is out of double rooms, and so they are placed in a twin room instead. Usually, Bond would use his suave and charm to get his own way (and she would tell him off without really meaning it, and he would laugh as they shared a kiss, and all would be well), but tonight, he simply climbs onto one of the beds and begins to drink his troubles away. Whatever those troubles might be, they’re hidden somewhere that Madeleine can’t reach, and she’s certainly not in the mood to start rehashing their disagreements from earlier. Instead, she simply finds a clean pair of pyjamas, climbing into the bed on the other side of the room, the one closest to the window.

“Goodnight,” she calls over her shoulder, feigning the act of going to sleep, only to get a grunt in response.

It’s an hour before Bond abandons his liquor in favour of switching the light off and slipping into a drunken sleep. Madeleine lies awake, watching the lights of the city that manage to make it through the drapes, before she reaches over to the bedside table and picks up the pen lying there.

**_**_not everything works out the way you think_**_** , she writes, handwriting sloppy in the darkness of the room.

She’s almost asleep when the reply comes through, printed across her wrist, like always.

_you can say that again._

**_**_?_ ** _ **

_i've been staying on my friend’s sofa because the man he’s in love with has up and left. the one way i never saw this working out._

Madeleine doesn’t know this person, but she knows what it’s like to console a friend through a heartbreak. Hell, she’s had enough heartache in her relatively short life that, honestly, it’s time she earned a break from it all.

**_**_that must be horrible. i’m sorry to hear that._ ** _ **

_should’ve seen this coming, really. no one thought it was going to end well, but i hoped that man had more grace than this._

**_**_i know how you feel. i think i moved into things too fast with the man i_**_**  - she pauses here, not really wanting to say _ran off with_ after what her soulmate’s friend is now going through - ** _ ** _only just met. i told him i loved him five days after we met._**_**

_do you love him?_

The words are everywhere now, spilling across her skin, untidy handwriting all over her knees and thighs.

**_**_yes, i do. only not the way i thought i did._ ** _ **

_this really sounds like something you need to talk to him about._

**_**_i don’t want to hurt him_**_**.

_you’ll only hurt him more in the future if you keep this from him._

They’re right. Of course they’re right. Bond, from the sounds of things, has been manipulated enough over the years, and she’s not going to contribute towards that.

**_**_thank you_**_** , she writes, hoping that whoever her soulmate is can feel the extent of her gratitude through the two short words, before she lets the pen drop to the ground and gives in to sleep.

 

+

 

She doesn’t tell Bond. In the end, she almost doesn’t have to.

They’re sitting in a café in the plaza square, watching the crowds of tourists going about their day in the sun, and Madeleine doesn’t get further than _we need to talk about something_ , before Bond stops her with an _i know_.

Madeleine raises an eyebrow, questioningly. “How do you know?”

Bond makes a gesture towards her; she looks down to see the fading marks all over her arms of words that haven’t quite cleared up yet.

“Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?”

“You can’t avoid what’s right in front of you.”

Her eyes flicker to his hands, his arms - they’re unmarked, no trace of writing anywhere - and then nods. “I suppose not.”

 

+

 

They share twin rooms every time after that, and that’s fine. Madeleine finds that she likes this better than the infatuated teenager phase of their relationship. The atmosphere certainly feels less tense than it had been, now that they’ve cleared the air, unanimously deciding that, maybe, friendship is what they need at this point.

If anything, Madeleine thinks, it’s made them open up to each other a bit more. She starts telling him things about her childhood over a couple of vodka martinis, the good __and__  the bad - and, with some gentle prodding, she gets some details out of Bond too, and his childhood out in the middle of the Scottish countryside. She can’t hear any traces of a Scottish accent in his voice, but maybe he’s spent so long hiding it that he’s lost it altogether. Maybe that’s what he wants.

She tentatively asks about Vesper too, _the big one_ , as diplomatic as she can because she can gather that it’s still a painful subject for him. She doesn’t get much information in reply, but she can tell that Bond cared for her a lot, and, yes, it may have gotten easier after some closure, but the loss is still there. She doesn’t say she’s sorry, because she didn’t know this woman and her apologies wouldn't mean anything, but she squeezes his hand in hers and he squeezes back to tell her he knows what she means.

That particular night, they share the liquor that sometimes sits on their nightstand (it's becoming less of a common occurrence, which she appreciates), and Madeleine doesn’t ask if Vesper was his soulmate or not, whether this is the reason behind his bare skin, because she has a sneaky suspicion that she wasn’t.

They decide to leave town in a few days, even if Bond is eager to get going right away; the urge to constantly be on the move hasn’t left him, even if this is supposed to be him __stopping__  for once. Madeleine buys a little souvenir from the gift shop across the street from their hotel, and Bond, to his credit, tries to be interested in the various tourist-y items she collects on her way around the shelves, but this part of retirement isn’t for him, she can tell.

Maybe _no_  part of retirement is for him.

They’re two minutes away from checking out and leaving the hotel, when a shout from the doorway of the hotel stops them. Madeleine doesn’t recognise the man stood there, but Bond does; they shake hands like old friends, just before the man punches him in the arm, _hard_ , even though Bond barely bats an eyelid.

“From Lucia,” he explains, and Bond just kind of nods knowingly. Madeleine snorts softly at the sight, which attracts the man’s attention to her. Bond introduces him as Felix Leiter, and she introduces herself in turn, but apparently that’s not the answer Leiter were looking for. Instead, his eyes flicker back to Bond, curious. Ah. He wants their relationship status.

“She’s my friend,” is Bond’s simple reply, accompanied by a matter-of-fact shrug, and Madeleine doesn’t attempt to hide the smile that itches to spread across her face. Leiter looks a little surprised, like this kind of thing doesn’t really happen all that often, but he also doesn’t seem like the type to question it because he leaves it be after that.

It’s another hour and a half before they actually get on the road. Bond and Leiter head to the hotel bar to catch up, and Madeleine decides to leave them to it, instead going to sit in the sun, soaking up the warmth.

“So I see you haven’t left the past behind completely,” she jokes, a few hours later. They’ve headed south for now, stumbling upon a small village that Bond doesn’t know so well, and they’ve left their things at the hotel in favour of exploring.

“No one leaves the past behind completely,” Bond replies with a half smile of his own, and she has to agree with that. Both of them know that the past has ways of catching up to them, no matter what measures they take to leave it behind.

“At least my university exploits haven’t come back to haunt me yet.”

“I’d hardly call discovering your bisexuality _exploits_ ,” Bond says, and she raises an eyebrow at him. It’s not that she makes a secret out of it, but she’s never explicitly told people about it, certainly not Bond. She would have remembered _that_ conversation.

“Was it really that obvious?”

“It takes one to know one,” Bond replies, and it takes Madeleine a moment to realise what he’s _actually_ saying. She comes to a sudden stop in the middle of the street when it hits her, causing him to look back in confusion.

If this was a chick-flick film, she thinks, they would probably use this moment to hi-five, or something equally as cheesy.

Instead, she gathers him in her arms as best she can for a tight hug.

Perhaps when Oberhauser had said _the only one who could’ve understood _,__  he actually knew what he was talking about.

 

+

 

“When did you realise?” Bond asks, rather out of the blue, when they’re sat down by the window of the café with their coffees.

Madeleine hums as she thinks, looking back on it. “I think I was about thirteen or fourteen. What about you? When did you know?”

“I don’t know. I think it eventually just dawned on me.”

“Did people take it well?”

“It was none of their business.”

“Don’t spies make everything their business?” Madeleine says, but then, because the universe likes to be funny, she’s distracted from whatever reply Bond gives by a woman sitting at the table across from them, her long dark hair tumbling down her back. She’s gorgeous - and very far out of her league.

“You should go and talk to her, you know,” Bond says, and she glances back to see him smirking at her from across the table, having clearly noticed her interest.

She hides her own smile behind her coffee cup, staining the white china with red lipstick. “I can’t.”

Bond raises an eyebrow. “What’s stopping you?”

She doesn’t say anything, but in this case, perhaps she doesn’t need to; the hand that flies to her wrist, an action that Bond’s gaze follows, is explanation in itself.

“Does yours ever write to you?” Madeleine asks, after a long pause. They don’t usually talk about their soulmates, as if that would be crossing some kind of line, but she likes to think that they’ve become close enough friends over the course of this __retirement__  situation to warrant a conversation about it.

“On occasion,” Bond says after a pause of his own, draining the last of his coffee. “Not necessarily on purpose. I think they write things down and forget that I’ll see them too.”

So her hunch was right. Vesper _hadn't_ been his soulmate.

“I used to do that all the time. I wrote my homework on my arm when I studied at Oxford.” She smiles at the memory. “Do you have any idea who they might be?”

“No. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“Why?”

“Feelings can get in the way.”

“What about me?”

“We're friends. That's different.”

“In that case, may I ask you another personal question?”

“Even if I said no, you’d still ask.” Madeleine raises her eyebrow at that, because she’s learnt enough about ethics working as a psychologist, but Bond doesn’t seem to be one for ethics. “What is it?”

“Do you miss it? MI6, I mean.”

Quiet. Then: “No.”

“Liar,” she says immediately. _Aren’t spies supposed to be good liars?_ Maybe she’s spent too long being around them. “I can read it in your face, James.”

“Well, it wouldn’t matter now. I left all of that behind when I chose to retire with you.”

It seems she’s not the only one who doesn’t want to call it __running away__.

“If you want to go back, James, I won’t say no.”

“Where would you go, if I did?”

“London, of course.” She smirks at the look on his face. “You think you can get rid of me so easily, James Bond? You chose to be my friend, you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

His mouth curls up into a half smile. “Thank god for that.”

 

+

 

Eight months after his resignation, James Bond walks back into MI6 with Madeleine Swann by his side.

It’s a varying reception, to say the least.

Bond ends up in Mallory’s office almost as soon as they arrive, and the shouting starts less than two minutes after the door swings shut behind him, which means that Madeleine is left in the company of Mallory’s secretary, a friendly woman named Eve who takes her to the canteen for a cup of coffee and something to eat.

“So, you’re the woman to steal James Bond from us,” Eve jokes as they choose the table in the corner, away from the hustle and bustle of the other staff going about their working day. “I’ve heard lots about you.”

“I like to think we’ve moved beyond that.” At the raised eyebrow, Madeleine quickly amends her words. “We’re just friends now, and I think we’re both better that way.”

“I see. What brings you out of retirement?”

“James missed this -” she gestures to the room at large “- and I suppose I missed the stability of going to work everyday too. Europe is beautiful, but I couldn’t do it for the rest of my life. If I couldn’t, James certainly couldn’t.”

“Definitely not,” Eve agrees. “We were all waiting for him to come back. He always does.”

“Seems so.”

“What are you going to do now you're here? You’re a psychologist, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. I was hoping to find a clinic in London that needed an extra pair of hands, but we’ll see what happens.”

“Well, we could always use an extra pair of hands,” Eve says, casual, and Madeleine nearly spits out her mouthful of coffee.

“What?”

For the two weeks, she’s been thinking about what she is going to do when Bond is back at MI6 and she’s settled in London. She’s never considered the possibility of trying to find employment at MI6 as well.

“I’m just putting it forward as a suggestion,” Eve says, perhaps mistaking the look on her face for something else - feeling obligated to take up the offer. “It’s not like you’re unqualified for the job, and you can already keep Bond in check, which is a feat in itself. Who’s to say you couldn’t do the same with the other agents?”

“I didn’t think the British secret service advertised open job offers to strangers.”

“You’re not a stranger, are you?” Eve smiles at her, and Madeleine has to admit that she has a point. As much as she hates to admit it sometimes, as much resentment as she still carries towards her father, she’s been around people from this kind of life since the day she was born. She knows these people. She knows how they operate.

Eve must have subtly got a message through to Mallory when Madeleine isn’t paying all that much attention, because the man asks to speak to her alone when he’s finally finished lecturing Bond, who has managed to wrangle his way back into a job (Madeleine doesn’t quite know how he’s done it). Although she hasn’t been trained in MI6 regulations specifically, her extensive background in her field is exactly the kind of thing they’re looking for. Not only that, she has double-oh seven’s personal recommendation, something which seems to be the highest honour an employee can have. Obviously, Mallory warns her, there will be extensive background checks and tests for her to pass, not to mention some talk that might go round the office, and she can completely see why. Given her father’s history, her connection to Spectre, she might be seen as somewhat suspicious during the next few weeks. Of course, she knows she’s innocent, as does Bond, who promises that he will personally take care of anyone who tries to harass her. It’s a rather ominous threat, but she thanks him, nonetheless, because it feels good to have someone looking out for her during this __new__  new life she’s trying to build for herself.

Both she and Bond are sent down to Q Branch as part of their medical evaluations the next day - extra security measures, Eve tells her, after the old building was hit. To make sure everyone is fit to defend themselves, should anything similar happen again. Madeleine remembers the news reports of that day from her office at the Hoffler clinic, the number of casualties rising as the hours of coverage passed. The quartermaster is as professional as she remembers, but he doesn’t look very pleased to see the two of them, blatantly ignoring Bond’s attempts to get him chatting. He leaves them afterwards with an _if that’ll be all, double-oh seven, doctor swann_ , and Madeleine watches the way Bond’s eyes follow him out of the room.

She files __that__  little piece of suspicion away for later.

+

 

With nowhere else to go, Madeleine finds herself standing on the doorstep of Bond’s old flat in Chelsea.

It doesn’t look very homely, or even that lived in (understandable, since it doesn’t seem like Bond spent much time here) but there’s two of them now, and she’s sure they can make a difference. She starts right away, wrestling with some of the flat-pack furniture that’s been gathering dust in the corner of the living room. By the time she’s finished, Bond has a mini-shelf and another coffee table to add to his sparse collection of belongings.

“Better already,” she declares, proud of herself, and her new flatmate only rolls his eyes and grumbles under his breath.

He cheers up when the two of them decide to __investigate__  the bar just around the corner. The pretty bartender - another blonde, hair falling past her shoulders in long waves - makes eyes at her until Madeleine offers to buy her a drink once her shift is over, Bond grinning triumphantly in her peripheral vision.

Ten hours later, she’s stepping back over the threshold of the flat, missing a shoe and her bra, makeup smudged across her face, only to find Bond waiting for her with a smug look on his face.

“Don’t you dare,” Madeleine says, which sets him off chuckling.

“I’m glad you had a good time.”

“We can never go back to that bar again,” she declares, perching on the arm of the sofa.

“Shame. I quite liked it there.” And then, because Bond seemingly can’t help himself: “Seems like you did too.”

Madeleine groans. “Don’t. I already feel guilty.”

“What on earth for?”

She glances at him out the corner of her eye. “Sometimes - Don’t you ever feel like you’re being…I don’t know, unfaithful?”

Bond raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t be good at my job if I did.”

He has a point. You’d have to be deaf, after all, to miss the rumours going around MI6 about double-oh seven and his __escapades__ , but you’d also have to be deaf if you missed how many times people commended Bond for (nearly) always being the agent that retrieved information so quickly. 

People at MI6, it seems, don’t have much regard for soulmates. She could probably have a field day psycho-analysing it all.

She might not be able to go back to _ _that__ particular bar after her own escapade, but it’s not much of a loss. She’s already become a regular member of the usual pub crowd, the employees that, regardless of time of day, will go for a pint after work on Fridays. A few of the others in the crowd are people she remembers from when she came into contact with MI6 the first time. They’re all friendlier than she was expecting too, even the quartermaster, who, despite the initially frosty welcome, buys her a drink and has a genuinely pleasant conversation with her.

Although, weighing up the evidence, she’s certain that this was because he had a crush on Bond - screw that, _still has_  a crush on Bond.

He may get along surprisingly well with her, but Q has been avoiding agent double-oh seven like he’s the plague incarnate, and, for one reason or another, Bond can’t seem to deal with that fact. Even as they sit at the breakfast table the morning he leaves for a mission in Poland, picking their way through slices of toast, it’s the only thing he can find to talk about.

“I’m sure he’ll come around,” Madeleine says for the fifth time, and the answering huff from Bond is lost in the bottom of his coffee mug. “Q doesn’t seem like the type to hold long grudges.”

“Apparently we’re both being proven wrong.”

“Maybe he just needs time. You do owe him two cars now, not to mention all the equipment you’ve lost that he’s told me about.”

Bond grimaces as he finishes his coffee, maybe thinking of the fates of both of those cars, but he doesn’t have much time to deliberate on how he could replace the wreckages of two cars. He’s being called in for an early debrief before his mission. He’ll no doubt be gone by the time her shift starts.

“Send me a postcard!” She yells at his retreating back, and Bond pauses for a moment, as if remembering something, before throwing a smile over his shoulder.

“I might just do that.”

 

+

 

She’s too late to catch Bond before he leaves for the airport, but, four days later, there is a Polish postcard sitting on their doormat in the morning, the words _nice weather. still alive. - j.b_ scribbled on the back of it. Madeleine sticks it to the fridge with a magnet, alongside a post-it note that reads _buy more bread_  in her own neat handwriting.

Not quite the romantic domesticity she had planned for herself as a child, but no one really knows how things are going to turn out.

She ends up bringing Q lunch in his office that day, after hearing from Eve that it’s almost impossible to get the man to remember to eat when he’s focusing on a mission. Q moves paperwork aside so that she can sit down, but it’s not quick enough for Madeleine not to notice a postcard, a replica of the one on her fridge, and handwriting that looks suspiciously like it says _wish you were here_  in Bond’s familiar penmanship.

She only just manages to fight back a smile.

 

+

 

Three weeks, and a whole lot of stress, later, double-oh seven is back in London with a gunshot wound to the leg, bruises on his arms, and a trail of five casualties behind him.

He seems quite cheerful, given the circumstances.

“The only MI6 psychologist I like,” Bond proclaims upon seeing her, and she laughs, giving him an awkward, one-armed hug, perching on the end of his hospital bed with a clipboard.

“Behave, James.”

“Of course.” He flashes her the trademark double-oh seven smile, and Madeleine simply rolls her eyes, immune by this point, and tries _very_ hard not to look at the messy handwriting that covers the back of his hands, too messy for her to read what is written there. She doesn’t ask about it during her evaluation, and Bond doesn’t draw attention to it, which isn’t surprising. She already knows that he wants nothing to do with the person that the universe has picked out for him, whomever they may be.

That little detail is a mystery that is quickly solved, however, only two days later. Madeleine stops by Q Branch on the way to her office, intending to pick up some files before her appointment with double-oh three later on, and she nearly drops them when she realises that the handwriting scrawled across the file - _Q’s_  handwriting - is the same handwriting that had been stretched and faded across Bond’s hands only hours previously.

Of course, when she thinks about it, it makes perfect sense. She’s always noticed the unspoken _thing_  between Bond and the quartermaster, even before Bond ran off with her. After getting to know both of them as well as she has, she can’t think of a better soulmate for the person she has come to call her closest friend. Not to mention, Q, despite his animosity, is so obviously smitten with Bond, and she would put good money on the claim that he feels the same way.

Now she just has to do something about it.

 

+

 

**_**_i need your advice_**_** , she scrawls along the length of her arm, under her work shirt.

_go on _._ _

**_**_do i tell my best friend who his soulmate is? am i crossing a line?_ ** _ **

_that depends on who it is._

**_**_i think he likes them, and they like him. but i feel like i’m invading his privacy. i’m not supposed to know what handwriting to match, but i do._ ** _ **

_would he ultimately be happier because of it?_

**_**_i think so_**_**.

_then I think you have your answer._

Why do they always know exactly what to say?

Not for the first time in her life, she longs to know who this person is so she can thank them in person. She’s tried before to get details, going as far as to simply write **_**_qui es-tu? who are you?_**_**  one time, but there was no response, and she’s pretty sure that there would be no response if she asked now. Her soulmate has never made the effort to find out anything about her; maybe they don’t want to be found, or maybe they just don’t care.

Instead, she rummages in her bag for her phone, pulling up Eve’s number.

_i need your advice_ , she sends again.

_i really am popular today_ , she texts back, an inside joke Madeleine can’t pick up on. _what do you need?_

__

+

 

“Do you ever hear from your soulmate?” she asks Eve, when they’re down the pub and celebrating their matchmaking success. Their __simple plan__  hadn’t actually been that simple; it had taken two weeks of failed attempts to get the two soulmates alone, and then a coincidental moment of Q writing a note on his hand at the same time that Bond just happened to be in the nearby vicinity, before Madeleine could coax her closest friend into accepting that this could be, quite possibly, the best thing that ever happened. Some people, she told him, go their whole lives and never meet their soulmate. He’s one of the lucky ones. He shouldn’t give up on that simply because he’s afraid of the worst case scenario.

She has no idea where Bond and Q are right now, but Q is over an hour late to the pub, and she hasn’t received any angsty texts from Bond, so their talk must be going well. God knows they’ve needed to have one ever since Bond’s return to London. It might not be the romantic declaration of love that directors always made films about, but it’s a step in the right direction.

“Not very often,” Eve says in response to her question. “Not as much as we used to when we were children.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Maybe sometimes. But then we’ve both probably got our own lives and careers going on. It’s not something I try to worry over. If I meet them, then I meet them. If I don’t, well, at least I know they lived their life to the fullest, and I lived mine too.”

“Do you know their name?”

“No. I don’t need to. I know they’re roughly my age, they’re adaptable, and they’re smart. I don’t need to know their name to know that what kind of person they are.”

“Did they tell you all of this?” _Lucky her_ , Madeleine thinks, because her own soulmate hasn't told her anything about themselves.

“Not necessarily. I inferred quite a bit. They used to write notes all over my arms, all sorts of medical things I didn’t really understand - of course, you’d probably understand all of it.” She laughs then.

Madeleine doesn’t return the sound. Something about this feels too close to home.

 

+

 

Just before the start of her shift, Madeleine doodles a flower across her palm, adorned with a small heart for the woman that may or may not be her soulmate.

She’s called into a meeting with both Mallory and Bond first thing, and the two of them run into Eve just before they make it to his office; her eyes immediately go to Eve’s palm, and the shape of something etched there.

“That’s pretty,” Mallory comments, over the rushing noise that now fills her ears, having clearly noticed it. “Something else from an admirer?”

“You could say that,” Eve replies with a smile, reaching for one of the pens on her desk and scribbling something across her wrist. Madeleine subtly sneaks a look at her own wrist, and the shadow of words visible through the thin material of her sleeve.

What are the chances of this? Billions of people in the world, billions of people that don’t play a part in the life she had spent so long trying to run away from, and _her soulmate_  is tangled up in the middle of it.

Maybe this is why fate keeps throwing spies and MI6 into her path. She couldn’t avoid it forever.

She drags her eyes back to what’s happening in front of her - Eve briefing Mallory about the meetings he has planned for that afternoon, something to do with the director of MI5 - but is instead met with Bond’s icy blue gaze staring at her, something akin to surprise in his eyes.

He’s noticed.

He doesn’t say anything right there and then, thank goodness for that, but Bond wastes no time pulling her aside the moment that they’re a safe distance away from Mallory’s office.

“Moneypenny,” is all he says.

Madeleine sighs, fingers curling against the drawing on her palm. “Don’t say anything. Please.”

Bond raised an eyebrow. “You’ve changed your tune. What happened to _best thing that could happen to you_?” He pushes his sleeve up to prove his point - scrawled in his own handwriting is ****you need to eat more.****   ** **lunch, 12.30, my treat?**** “Surely, you should be taking your own advice.”

“It isn’t the same,” she argues, despite the smile that tries to break out on her face. “You and your quartermaster are hopelessly infatuated with each other anyway - no, don’t deny it, I can see right through you.” Bond, who had been about to deny it, closes his mouth. “Eve and I haven’t made it past the friendly work colleagues stage.”

“You __could__  -” He starts to say, but she holds up a hand.

“No, James. I’m not saying anything - at least, not right now. Can I trust you not to say anything too?”

Bond nods, but he doesn’t look like he likes it, not at all. “If it’s what you really want.”

And it is - because, as much as Madeleine __wants__  her romantic soulmate moment, she knows she has to figure out how to do this __right__  first.

 

+

 

In light of the most recent mission, Madeleine soon finds herself at Saturday night dinner at Q’s flat. It’s exactly how she imagined: small, full of disembodied pieces of tech, and ruled completely and utterly by the two cats that stick to Bond the moment he steps inside. It’s almost like he’s as much a part of the household as Q himself is. She can’t tell whether or not the quartermaster is happy about that.

At half past seven, Eve arrives, and Madeleine’s breath catches at just how _pretty_ she looks, until she notices that Eve is accompanied by a man she’s never seen before. Q shakes his hand like they’re familiar with each other, but Bond, catching her questioning gaze, shrugs. Eight months of being out of the loop have their drawbacks.

“This is my partner, Stephen,” Eve says, and Madeleine feels nausea rise in her stomach.

It’s not an uncommon thing, of course. People get into relationships with someone other than their soulmate all the time - perhaps, if some statistics are to be believed, it’s the more common outcome.

Call her hypocritical, but Madeleine, even taking into account her previous stint with Bond, never considered herself a part of that statistic.

Somewhere, deep down, she cleaves to the idea that she would find her soulmate, and they would get their fairytale ending.

The world has just proved to her once more: fairytale endings don’t exist.

 

+

 

“Okay, enough now. What is it?”

Madeleine looks up from the pages of the book she’s trying, and failing, to lose herself in. “Hm?”

Bond is watching her from the kitchenette, pouring himself a coffee and her a green tea. “You’ve been sulking for three days now.”

“I am not __sulking__ ,” she replies, a little incredulous. Bond, who is in the running for the most emotionally constipated man she’s ever met, is accusing her of sulking? Is she not allowed to be upset now?

“Is it about Eve?” There’s the clink of a spoon inside one of the mugs, stirring the contents. Bond is shaking his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes this is the way things are. It could be a lot worse - I’ve seen hundreds of soulmates turn on each other when they’re too mad for power. That being said, when this all started, I never thought I’d have to listen to you wax poetry about Moneypenny -”

“Well, I’m sorry my heartbreak is such an inconvenience to you, James,” she snaps, harsher than she initially means it to be.

Bond takes a long gulp of his coffee. “Madeleine -”

“Do you not understand how __lucky__  you are?” She interrupts, her anger bubbling over (whether it’s anger at Eve and Stephen, or anger at Bond for bringing it up, she’s not sure). “You don’t have to __wax poetry__  about your soulmate, because at least your soulmate is actually in love with you! Do you understand how many people would kill to be in your position? You don’t have to stand by and watch your soulmate love someone else whilst you can’t say anything. You don’t have to struggle with wanting to be with them and wanting them to be happy!”

Bond doesn’t react to the outburst, not even to argue back. His face shows no signs of anger (he can hide anger pretty well, but not well enough to keep it from her). He just keeps drinking his coffee in silence, which is almost __more__  infuriating than him being confrontational.

“I know what it’s like to think my soulmate is dead,” he says, just before she snarls a line about a photo lasting longer. “And I also know what it’s like to think that my soulmate betrayed me.”

“What do you mean?” She asks, and, although Bond doesn’t reply, the look on his face speaks louder than he ever could. It makes her anger, so prevalent a moment ago, falter and drain out of her.

“Is this about Vesper?” He gives a sharp nod. “Will you tell me what happened?”

“It was a long time ago,” Bond says instead. “I try to make peace with it as best I can.”

“Did you love her?”

“As much as it was possible for me to love someone. I was ready to give up MI6 for her.” He smiles wryly at that as he brings her the tea. “But maybe that’s not such an impressive feat anymore. I gave up MI6 for you as well, even if it isn’t quite the same.”

Madeleine nods slowly, taking the mug offered to her as he sits on the sofa beside her. “You resigned because you thought she was your soulmate?”

“Not just because of that. I loved her regardless, and so I would have quit Six anyway. Of course -” he shows her his palm, and the message from Q, something about a budget meeting and that they should get dinner afterwards “- it almost scared the life out of me when I woke up one morning and there was writing all over my hand. I don’t know whether it made the whole thing better or worse; my soulmate was still alive, but it was just one more thing about Vesper that wasn’t what I thought.”

“Did you ever find out who her soulmate was?”

“No. She never told me otherwise, and I never asked after she died. I suppose I could have looked. It’s bound to be on her file.”

“Maybe some things are better left alone,” Madeleine muses.

“Maybe,” Bond echoes.

 

+

 

She tries to keep things exactly the same with Eve after that.

They still go to the pub after work on Fridays with the rest of the usual MI6 crowd, squashed next to each other in their regular booth, and Madeleine pretends not to mind when the subject of Stephen comes up. Above all else, she wants Eve to be happy. Bond, for the most part, has kept to his word and not said anything; Madeleine has her suspicions that he might have mentioned something to Q, who merely squeezes her shoulder in sympathy the next time he sees her. She decides that she doesn’t mind this too much - Q has been in her shoes before, after all, and it seems like even James Bond, of all people, finds it difficult to lie to his soulmate.

She wishes that was an issue she had.

“Maybe we just weren’t meant to be romantic,” she laments to them one evening, after one too many glasses of wine. “Maybe we were only supposed to be platonic.”

“Not possible.” Bond, on the arm of the sofa next to her, puffs up his chest. “If anyone was your platonic soulmate, it would be me.”

Madeleine rolls her eyes as Q scoffs loudly from the other side of the room, but she knows, deep down, that it’s probably true.

She tries the dating scene after that, wondering if she could find some happiness of her own. One of these people is even a man that Eve attempts to set her up, and the wink she gives her before she leaves, supposedly for good luck, has Madeleine grimacing all the way from MI6 headquarters to the restaurant.

“You made quite an impression,” Eve informs her when they run into each other the next morning, and Madeleine feels a familiar sense of guilt creeping over her. Going on dates is all very well and good, but she doesn’t want to lead someone on if all she does is spend half of the night thinking about her soulmate. She wants to get to know Eve better, to know the little important details about the person who can make words appear on her skin.

**_**_i wish we knew each other_**_** , she writes, sitting in a bar after another date that isn’t working out, another woman chasing happiness with someone who isn’t her soulmate. She’s not sure if Eve will reply, but there’s a comfort in the knowledge that she’ll see it, that these words won’t be meaningless anymore.

“Doctor Swann!”

She’s startled out of her thoughts by the sound of a familiar voice, and she has to hold back her groan at the sight of Stephen. If there is one person she doesn’t want to see right now, it would be him. Still, her mother taught her good manners, and so she paints a smile on her face.

“Hello, Stephen,” she says. “Are you here with Eve tonight?”

“Yeah.” He gestures to a booth in the corner; through the small crowd of people gathered around a slot machine, she can see Eve, frantically texting someone. Madeleine takes a brief moment to wonder what on earth is so important.

“Do you want to join us?” Stephen offers.

“No, that’s okay. I’m just waiting for a taxi, actually.” She holds her phone up for effect, even though it’s been out of battery nearly an hour now. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Never,” he promises her, smiling, and a very small, very petty part of Madeleine wants to hate him. “But get home safe, okay?”

“I will.”

She waits until he gets back to his table before she leaves the bar without a backwards glance.

 

+

 

By the time she’s arrived home and plugged her phone in to charge, she has over ten missed calls. Most of them are from Bond.

The phone barely rings before he answers. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I was on a date.” Madeleine raises an eyebrow, even if Bond can’t see it. “Why? Where the hell are _you_ right now?”

“I’m still at Six. Q’s working late today.”

She has to smile at that, at the mental image of Q working late into the night with Bond by his side.

“You utter sap.”

Bond huffs. “Nevermind me. It’s Moneypenny you should be thinking about right now. She’s figured it out.”

“Figu -” It clicks, mid-sentence. “Oh. __Shit__.”

“Exactly. She phoned about an hour ago, panicking. I didn't think she _could_ panic. She’s called everything off with Stephen, saying she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do now. He was very understanding about it, by the way.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Madeleine groans, feeling the familiar sensation of guilt washing over her. This whole thing would be so much easier to deal with if Stephen was a bastard.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You could just give her a call. You’re on better talking terms than Q and I were.”

“ _ _That’s because Doctor Swann doesn’t owe Moneypenny for two ruined cars, double-oh seven__ ,” Q’s voice echoes in the background, but the playful back and forth does nothing to improve her mood.

“Is that supposed to be funny, James? I’m probably the __last__  person Eve wants to hear from right now.”

“Are you?” Bond asks. “Because I think you might be the person she needs to hear from the most.”

Madeleine snorts. She doesn’t believe him, because she knows how she would feel if the roles were reversed, but even so: “Since when were you a life advice expert?”

“Ever since I noticed that people who give advice can never accept it back.”

 

+

 

The answer to her predicament appears in the next few days - quite literally. Just because she hasn’t taken Bond’s advice, no matter how much of an expert he claims to be, doesn’t mean that Madeleine hasn’t had lengthy speeches prepared for the inevitable day when she runs into Eve whilst at Six. They’ve managed to avoid each other so far, much to their friends’ frustrations, but she’s not foolish enough to think that they can keep it up forever.

Sooner or later, they’re going to have to talk to each other about this.

She’s silently rehearsing one of these speeches, pacing up and down the length of her office, when she notices the words that are beginning to spring up on her arm.

_can we talk?_

**_**_i should have called_**_**. Maybe Bond _is_ the advice expert. Perhaps calling would have made this less awkward than it currently is. **_**_i’m sorry._**_**

_it’s okay. i think i formulate my thoughts better in writing._

**_**_something we have in common. even so, we should still talk about this in person. can we go for a drink after work?_ ** _ **

_usual place?_

Someone clears their throat; Madeleine looks up from her arm, only to find double-oh five watching her from the doorway.

“Am I interrupting -?”

“No. Of course not.” She scribbles a quick reply of **_**_perfect_**_**  across her palm, before gesturing to the chair opposite her own. “Have a seat.”

And, just like that, it’s back to work.

 

+

 

Of course, since this is MI6, an emergency (involving Bond, because who else could it be?) arises before the scheduled end of shift, sending everyone to their battle stations. Eve is three hours late to the pub, and Madeleine has already gone through three glasses of vodka and lemonade before her soulmate slips into the booth opposite her.

“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” Eve says, forgoing any hellos.

“I said I would be,” Madeleine replies, and suddenly the alcohol isn’t giving her all the confidence she hoped that it would. “So. It seems you’re my soulmate.”

“Yeah.” Eve manages a half smile. “Bloody coincidence, isn’t it?”

“I suppose I should have seen it coming. My entire life has been tied to this world. It had to be someone from an organisation like Six.” Madeleine drains the last of her drink. “What happens to us now? Where do we stand?”

“I’m not sure,” Eve admits. “I know you’re my soulmate, but we don’t really know much about each other outside of work.”

Madeleine nods. “I thought so.”

“I know all the films make it look like you’re supposed to fall into your soulmate’s arms the moment you find them, but I’ve just gotten out of a serious relationship to give myself time to figure out how I feel. I’m not about to fall into anyone’s arms. I hope you understand that.”

“Of course. It’s completely fine.”

“That being said -” Eve nods towards the bar, and that half smile is back on her face “- if you’re up for it, I’d like to buy you a drink and get to know you a little better. Is that alright?”

Madeleine returns the smile with one of her own. “Perfect.”

 

+

 

Life goes on.

Slowly, slowly, Madeleine begins to learn all those little details about her soulmate, the ones she’s been wanting to know for years.

She learns that Eve takes her coffee black, with one sugar - two, if it’s a particularly stressful day at the office.

She learns that Eve secretly misses fieldwork at times, longing for the adrenaline kick of it all one last time, if only to be away from the office during the many hours that she has to listen to Bond and Mallory arguing with each other.

Above all else, she learns that Eve is a great kisser.

 

+

 

Another thing she learns: working at Six is as unpredictable as it gets.

She’s called in on her day off, on her __overdue holiday__  (as Bond called it with a private smile, some reference that only he caught), after double-oh four returned from her mission early. The woman, albeit a little shaken, seems fine on all other fronts, and, after scheduling a few follow-up appointments, Madeleine heads to the canteen to find her girlfriend, her eyes lingering for a moment on Bond and Q in the far corner of the room, sitting opposite each other, trying not to make it obvious that they’re holding hands under the table.

“Adorable, isn’t it?” Eve’s familiar voice says from behind her, as her hand slips into hers, and Madeleine turns to smile at her.

“Very much so.”

“I’m glad it’s working out for them.” Eve gives her a grin of her own. “Have you any idea what’s it been like to have to go to work everyday with the modern equivalent of Romeo and Juliet?”

“At least you don’t live with Romeo,” Madeleine replies, eyebrow raised in Bond’s direction. “Well. Part-time, anyway. I assume I’m going to have the flat to myself more often than not these days.”

“I think that’s best for all involved, don’t you?” Eve smacks a kiss on her cheek, leaving a subtle print of lipstick there. “Come on. I bought you lunch.”

Madeleine raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s supposed to be your day off!” Her soulmate winks at her. “Let me do something nice for you.”

Madeleine chuckles, warmth radiating in her chest, and takes one last look at Bond - Bond, who manages to drag his eyes away from Q for a few seconds and meet her gaze. She beams at him for a moment, and he pulls a face back, which has her shaking her head fondly and following Eve to her table.

Turns out, the world is wrong.

Fairytale endings, however unconventional, can still exist.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know how i feel about this finished version, but this word document was 18 pages long and i couldn't anymore - rest in peace my soul, and my keyboard.


End file.
